Last week I happened to go to watch a play that claimed itself to be "inspired by true incidents showing how women ensnared by rituals, superstitions, taboos and social mores result in being trapped by men who exploit their vulnerability and ignorance. They are brutalised through religion and societal norms, abandoned by divorce and bigamy."
The socio-economic and political emancipation of female is usually restricted by male-dominated society in India. Also, there is no doubt and this remains a universally acknowledged fact that Indian remains one of the worst places on Earth to be born as female. For an artist, to portray this social dysfunction in his work remains quite a challenging task, especially for a playwright and play directors. Enticed by the curiosity to witness a work of art dealing with the serious topic related to feminism on stage seemed to be an interesting invitation that I could not resist.
The 85-minute play included around 20 minutes of audio-video presentation on a large screen in the beginning and the end of the play. Maybe the director intended to be placidly expressive by using a visual presentation and maybe many of the audience found it to be innovative as well. As a serious theatre loving person, I saw it as a failure of creativity. By all means, creativity must be expression of originality. The use of technological innovations such as lights and sounds are happily-accepted and intrinsic part of a play on stage, but using visual presentations, i.e., a documentary film, to convey the message that a play director should ideally do through his actors appeared to be a serious treachery by the director not only to the audience but to his own artistic integrity as well.
Child marriage, sexual repression of married women by their husbands, miscarriages being seen as social stigma and miserable conditions of widows are some unsmiling subject matters in need to be carefully dealt in works of art, particularly in a country like India. The play touched all these topics, though in a cluttered, beclouded and inarticulate manner that made its plots look broken, failing to give a clear message to the audience. The writer-cum-director of the play, showing off his strong hold over Urdu language, was brilliant in his narrative, but badly faltered in knitting up various separate plots together.
My idea is not to criticise (that is why I have not mentioned the name and director of the play, as well as the venue where it was staged), but to personally ponder about the motive and relevance of theatre as a mass media today. Amid the glory of internet, high popularity of Hollywood, Bollywood and several other suffixes ending in 'wood' representing various film industries and satellite televisions forever willing to feed us all sort of entertainment, theatre as a mass media remains limited to a handful of intelligentsia in our society. Irrespective of what age groups they belong to, urban and even rural settlers find more comfort today in going out to movies, gluing themselves to TVs and engaging in other sort of entertainment than giving even a thought over watching a play in a nearby theatre.
Despite its occasional creative failure in applying innovations and experimentations that I mentioned in an example above, theatre still remains today a healthy medium of procuring aesthetic delight and clean entertainment that intellectually enrich the audience. However, depressingly empty theatre halls lacking applause these years somehow drearily underline the fact that theatre is no more a viable product of mass communication.
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R
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